Be less stingy.

I'm resolved to be less stingy with myself this year.  As Siri and I walked along the river this afternoon, I puzzled about what that actually means.  My initial impression was that it was about treating my body better - more baths, more lovely oils for my winter-chapped skin - an attention to sustenance, in place of a misplaced and outmoded devotion to Puritan scarity, replacing the inner critic's "You don't need..." with an affirmative "I want."  Some of that is material, yes.  A piece of me cringes from that reality, even now - but I consider that the last few months are the first in years that I've had an adequate income.  I'm behind on necessities, not luxuries.

I've inflicted other stinginesses on myself, too.  Classes I've wanted to take, things I've wanted to explore that I haven't, because of money, but also because I thought I could live without them for now, in favor of more practical, pressing needs.  And then there is the giant stinginess, how I live my life, such that I don't prioritize the things I want to do, always putting the things I have to do first.  Inevitably, I have no time for writing, painting, walking, playing with my dog - and sometimes I'm almost relieved to be so singlemindedly busy, because who knows what would be unearthed if I wasn't?

So what does being less stingy look like? 
Gleaming skin - from being loved up with oils and lotions, at least 2 facials a year, and many warm baths. 
Signing up for beginning singing and guitar classes.  (!)
Making time for art - writing, practicing instruments, painting, photography, whatever. 
Buying some new music! 
Letting myself discover and follow my interests. 
Getting some fun winter dress-up clothes.
Taking the time to sit still, anywhere, and notice anything - asking "What is there to be enjoyed in this moment?", and enjoying it.

Ciao, 2010!  Bienvenue, 2011!

I'm not fond of our current neighborhood, but oh, the light in the trees at sunset!

Tympanic membrane, anvil, hammer

I am squatting like an Indian, holding a tepid mug of tea in my two hands, rocking forward onto my toes, back on my heels, bouncing off the cushion beneath me, rocking back to my toes… In a flash, my writer’s block is relieved.

Rocking is medicine. Sometime over the summer I learned that any kind of mental congestion, overheat, can be resolved by swinging in a hammock. A lazy push is necessary, simply laying in the hammock isn’t enough.

~~~~

Most every massage session I’ve ever given began with my rocking my client on the table. It is a convenient way to introduce my body to theirs, an on-again, off-again touch, not an intrusive, immediate laying-on-of-hands. I think it is such an unusual movement for them after a full day of sitting stiff in an office chair, that it breaks their mental tunnel vision and allows them to be present once again in their bodies. It makes my job easier – rather than mowing down ranks of rigid muscles with lethal elbows, I can cajole a body to let go of its own accord.

There’s some science here. I tell my massage students about it, in hopes that they will employ compassionate techniques like these, saving their clients’ and their own bodies from agony. But is there any need, really, to dissect what every mother has known since the her first child drew breath - that gentle movement is grounding, and brings even the most recalcitrant child back to the safe haven of its body?

~~~~

I would gather and rock in my arms Tony, who slipped from a bridge weighted by deep and inexplicable sadness. I would rock the water from his ears and warm his body, pressed close to mine.

I would gather and rock my mom, with too many maladies to count, in hopes of healing cognitive connections, in prayer for miracles.

I would gather and rock my old friend Erin, rock until all her pieces came back together, sifted into their places, and made her whole again.

I would gather and rock all the people for whom there is nothing else I can do, but give of my body.

~~~~

In the depths of despair over losing my mother’s mind, I was saved by the love of my boyfriend. The rhythms of our heartbeats, the rise and fall of our breaths, were enough.

In college I sat one night in meditation with some dear friends. In the silence, listening to my heartbeat, I felt a slight rocking caused by the pulse of blood through my body. I was pleased to feel my own rhythm, permeating my entire being.

~~~~

We are outrageously out of touch with ourselves. In what other place and time have we so skewed the balance between body and mind, thudding heart and intellect, such that our bodies are merely the vehicle for our brains? Asses slung in office chairs, we touch just with the tips of our fingers, while our minds whir away about nothing to do with our being. Our bodies whisk our minds home at the end of the day. The car radio is blasting; maybe we don’t even use our ears – tympanic membrane, anvil, hammer – to hear it.

Or perhaps the music is unexpectedly moving – a holy choir chorusing out into a dark night – and one cannot help but listen, reverberation of another’s throat in ear – and what is that ache in my chest, suddenly, at beauty? The crash backwards into my body is painful. Where have I been? What have I missed, oh body?

~~~~

A violin string plucked will cause the instrument’s body to resonate for 24, and then 48 hours. After an hour of practice, the instrument will continue its steady, warm hum for two days, before falling silent, growing cold.

What if we are similar? Must we plow the furrows of each others’ fingertips to maintain a healthy resonance? Do we fall silent when we do not rub up against one and other?

~~~~

I know this – when I do not touch, when all is done for me, I lose the groundedness of being. Shivering in my skin, pouring morning tea, steam billowing toward my face… holy, holy, I am alive.

The next step.

Perhaps there's something to be said for unbridled idleness.

I went down to the park to float our little section of the Deschutes and had a wonderful experience of empty-headedness. I think I tend to run from such a thing, into pseudo-productivity on the web or elsewhere, because I feel guilty or lazy, or because I think I should be wisely using the time/space continuum of my mental real estate.

Today I didn't direct my little craft, but let the swift riffles and eddies take me where they would. I saw a water snake resting on the river bed, and noted which of the many pools is the deepest. I drifted back upstream in an eddy and became a captive of river-time; then I was amused that the tiniest of whorls set me free again.

It was when I was becalmed on a boulder that I thought - this is the next step of my healing. Allowing myself a lack of movement, mental quiet, in which to become observant and wholly present to the present of the moment.

I'd been looking outside myself for an answer to the congestion in my head. Somehow, though, it makes sense that mental nourishment would come in the form of undirected thoughts, and the occasional quiet space between them.

Trail running

Suffice it to say that we had a lot of visitors, and I became obsessed with school. Oh yes, and my computer crashed. Moving on...

Jim and I recently decided to start trail running. I'd been inspired by a poster advertising a women's trail running group, which I of course saw about 2 months after the group started running together. Given that I'm nowhere near my normal fitness level, and that we've moved to a place where altitude is indeed a factor in oxygen-suckage while working out, I wasn't willing to drop in on this group and ask them to wait for my slow ass.

I wanted to bolster my cardio fitness in a way only running (and rowing) can, and the 'trail' part? Ah yes. Someone's fasciitis-prone feet appreciate not running on pavement. Besides, it's prettier.



We took ourselves down to Shevlin Park and (accidentally) ran such a long portion of the loop trail that it necessitated our walking part of the way back. What's this? Walking in a post about trail running, in Bend?!

Here's the thing. My fitness Weltanschauung has shifted greatly in the months since we've moved here. I was so aware of this the other morning, my feet and breathing on cruise control, listening to birdies and the creek below, and wait, what's that! A little bit of endorphin? Yum! We weren't out to beat anyone, achieve a particular heart rate, or push through the wall, man! We carried water, and when we got tired, we walked. I wasn't in desperate need of a nap the moment we finished. That little endorphin rush fueled the rest of my day, and I was perfectly pleased with myself.

Somewhere along the line it's occured to me that working out is about building up, not breaking down. (I'll leave the speculation about how I could have ever come to the opposite conclusion to another post.) During that run, I enjoyed the act of running. I felt strong. I can't wait to do it again.

Perhaps the magic is in this - we were mindful about our run. We didn't run too fast or too long, we chatted throughout, we adjusted our pace as necessary, we took care of our bodies in the aftermath with a good stretch and breakfast. We were fully within our bodies as we ran, and afterward.

Recently our local tai chi instructor provided some background on one of the many purposes of tai chi. Apparently the ancients considered that each of us has a given amount of chi, and that most anything we do reduces our chi. The focused, graceful movements of body and energy while practicing are intended to rebuild chi.

I don't know how those fellows would feel about running as a means of rebuilding chi, but I hope that they'd agree that any activity undertaken with a modicum of mindfulness can be nourishing, even if it requires an expenditure of sweat.

Perhaps many of our problems, personally and otherwise, arise from a failure to approach our lives mindfully. We run too fast, carry inadequate water, flail headlong into the bitterbrush...

I'm going to keep trail running as long as the weather holds out, increasing time and pace as it feels right. And perhaps, from this new vantage point, I'll again let the lessons of my workouts inform my life.

Getting better all the time

These days I am always aware that I'm healing from something, but I don't always know from what.

Gluten intolerance pretty seriously kicked my ass before I knew what was going on; perhaps the process of becoming aware of all the ways my body needed to heal led me to an awareness of the other ways in which I was wounded.

Some are fairly intense - my mom's multiple medical and psychological diagnoses run me (and my sis) through the gamut on a fairly frequent basis. A sense of abandonment is the biggie, there.

Some are pretty trivial, on the outside: the traffic in Portland regularly turned me into a candidate for Tourette's syndrome - somewhat comical to any passenger who knew me more as an empathetic massage therapist than a Type A driver.

And some are old, and so much a part of the fabric of my life that I have no idea who I'd be without them.

Perhaps other gluten intolerant and celiac folks can identify with the feeling that once you'd been off gluten long enough, the mental light bulb clicked back on, and the path back to the life you remembered was illuminated. My body started healing 10 months ago in August. By December, my spirit/psyche/animus reared up and announced that it was leaving Portland, getting the heck out of the city, and going back to a beautiful, slower paced place where it belonged.

And so here we are. I left my massage practice, and now I'm working a very part time job. We live on a small piece of property where the wind and the occasional coyote are all we hear at night. We're 2 miles from the nearest coffee shop, 7 miles from downtown. Sometimes there's nothing to do, so we sit on the porch in the sun, read books, maybe play badminton.

I'm protective of the peace that has descended. In the quiet, I'm aware of the shifting tides of experience, memory, emotion. Floating along I can gently examine parts my life, set them aright. Little bits of healing occur, all the time.




Today I went for a row on Suttle Lake. There were thunderclouds building up in the east, but the lake was calm, glacial green-blue, and quiet. Once I'd packed up and dried off, Siri and I stretched out on a short dock. The lake is so beautiful it's almost shocking. I'm so pleased to now have a life in which I notice these things, and can be filled by them. I'm no longer just a tourist, a dilettante in a life I wish I had. Some part of me that had crinkled and contracted thanks to living in a big city where every view is compromised by buildings, noise, dirt, cracks open and begins to refill with wonder.

Wonder feels so expansive, like it makes more space in me for all of what is and feels good in life. So unlike cynicism...

What would a critical mass of wonder look like?